I don't even count how long I've been single. Widowed suddenly in my 30s, had to get on as a single parent + demanding job.
Now in my 50s, but men my age are either not very interesting to me, or they want to meet women 20 years younger. I've given up bothering about it tbh.
DrSeth you say you're a man of 41. What age bracket of woman do you specify in OLD, or look out for IRL?
Because I think that most of the problem is men's Peter Pan tendencies, ad their overinflated sense of their own value. I'm fit, don't look my age, financially sorted, extremely successful in my career, and actually quite a nice person IRL -- if I were a man, I'd have women flocking; but as a woman, I am apparently "too" independent, "too" clever, and "too" successful.
Who was it said that we've become the men we wanted to marry? THroughout my 40s, as my DC was becoming a teenager, I was very aware of aging, and aging alone. I found I just wanted to cry all the time (although that could have been my job, which was tough at the time). Now I'm just not that bothered. It's men's loss, frankly. But if I let myself think about it, I do get sad about it, still. So I've trained myself not to think about it too much.
But the fact that I've even posted on this thread tells me that I still do mourn the loss of another kind of life.